Silent cancers are cancers that do not have any noticeable early symptoms. Some silent cancers include breast cancer, ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer, Pancreatic cancer and lung cancer.
If you're wondering how long you can have cancer without knowing it, there's no straight answer. Some cancers can be present for months or years before they're detected. Some commonly undetected cancers are slow-growing conditions, which gives doctors a better chance at successful treatment.
Lung cancer, ovarian cancer, colorectal and cervical cancers, as well as breast cancer, can all go unnoticed by patients until they are very advanced, stage 3 or stage 4 tumors. These tumors are often defined as “late stage” cancers.
Stage 4 Cancer Symptoms
1 In some cases, there are no symptoms at all, so it's possible to have stage 4 cancer and not know it. Most of the time, a cancer that reaches stage 4 affects not only the part of the body where it originated but the areas where it has spread to as well.
Median survival in patients with cancer of unknown primary origin ranges from 11 weeks to 11 months. The 5-year overall survival rate is about 11%.
Most blood tests aren't used on their own to diagnose cancer. But they can provide clues that may lead your health care team to make the diagnosis. For most types of cancer, a procedure to remove a sample of cells for testing is often needed to be sure.
Aside from leukemia, most cancers cannot be detected in routine blood work, such as a CBC test. However, specific blood tests are designed to identify tumor markers, which are chemicals and proteins that may be found in the blood in higher quantities than normal when cancer is present.
Not all types of cancer can be detected through screening tests yet, but physicians and scientists are continually working on new ways to detect cancer in early stages.
Pancreatic Cancer: The Silent Killer.
A cancer may also cause symptoms like fever, extreme tiredness (fatigue), or weight loss. This may be because cancer cells use up much of the body's energy supply. Or the cancer could release substances that change the way the body makes energy.
Cancer survival rates by cancer type
The cancers with the lowest five-year survival estimates are mesothelioma (7.2%), pancreatic cancer (7.3%) and brain cancer (12.8%). The highest five-year survival estimates are seen in patients with testicular cancer (97%), melanoma of skin (92.3%) and prostate cancer (88%).
“Cancer fears being alone,” says Perrakis. “For Cancer, partnership, love, marriage, and family are sacred above all things, so Cancer worries that they will end up without these connections.” For Cancer, the thought of not succeeding in their personal relationships or not having a close-knit network is unacceptable.
The majority of cancer patients lose weight at some point in the course of the disease. Weight is sometimes the sign that leads someone to get diagnosed with cancer, but it may occur at any time, such as during treatment or in the advanced stages. Your eating habits may change.
Most cancers take years to develop and often occur in people as they get older. This long process is mainly due to the cell's protective mechanisms to keep cancer from developing. However, as cells age, the chance of accumulating harmful mutations increases and cancer cells can start to grow.
According to the most recent statistical data from NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program, the median age of a cancer diagnosis is 66 years. This means that half of cancer cases occur in people below this age and half in people above this age.
Some cancers don't make tumor markers that can be found with current tests. Some people don't have higher tumor marker levels even if the type of cancer they have usually makes tumor markers.
Hodgkin lymphoma is an uncommon cancer that develops in the lymphatic system, which is a network of vessels and glands spread throughout your body. The lymphatic system is part of your immune system.
Sometimes, a cancer diagnosis comes out of the blue, with no symptoms at all. But more often, there are various symptoms that may be warning signs of the disease.
Imaging tests used in diagnosing cancer may include a computerized tomography (CT) scan, bone scan, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET) scan, ultrasound and X-ray, among others. Biopsy. During a biopsy, your doctor collects a sample of cells for testing in the laboratory.
The doctor may start by asking about your personal and family medical history and do a physical exam. The doctor also may order lab tests, imaging tests (scans), or other tests or procedures. You may also need a biopsy, which is often the only way to tell for sure if you have cancer.
Lung and bronchus cancer is responsible for the most deaths with 130,180 people expected to die from this disease. That is nearly three times the 52,580 deaths due to colorectal cancer, which is the second most common cause of cancer death. Pancreatic cancer is the third deadliest cancer, causing 49,830 deaths.